Who Will Love This Boy For Me?

From Elizabeth Scalia’s latest, this mother’s insight into praying for other mothers with sons:

Having promised to remember several friends before the Christmas crèche at our altar after late-evening Mass, I stood pondering the scene. My attention was drawn to Mary and the Infant, and I felt powerfully compelled to pray in particular for some “mothers-and-sons” of my acquaintance: mothers of sons who are police officers and firefighters, and who wonder each day if they will see their little boys on the morrow; mothers who have lost their sons; mothers who deal with developmentally challenged sons for whom every day is a bittersweet question, “which mode will we see today, ‘meltdown’ or ‘mild’? Who will love this boy for me, and for himself, when I am not here? Who will see the sweetness of this boy-man, that is so obvious to me, but hidden to others?”

Update: Add to this reflection this by Tom Zampino: Douglas-to-Dust, Revisted, about a man who was some mother’s son.